


Marionettes

by redbrunja



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Red Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:23:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrunja/pseuds/redbrunja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki wasn't the first time Natasha'd been compromised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marionettes

Loki wasn't the first time she'd been compromised.  
  
Eighteen months into her tenure at SHIELD, they'd sent her and Barton after high-ranking Spetsnaz officer who'd accrued enough blackmail material that the Russian chain of command had let him retire to a balmy island with his encoded hard drives and his choice of a Red Room operative, designed to his specifications.  
  
The job itself was easy; the officer's security wasn't nearly as state-of-the-art as he believed. Natasha took out the Red Room operative first. She was getting too long in the tooth for the baby-doll dresses she wore but she fought fiercely, personally, passionately, programmed loyalties burned so deeply into her brain there wasn't room for even a scrap of self-preservation.  
  
Natasha put six bullets into her head.  
  
The Spetsnaz officer didn't die as cleanly. She hurt him until he told her every relevant scrap of information he possessed and then she hurt him more.  
  
The hard drives and passcodes were handed off to another team, she and Barton reached their safehouse with their cover intact, and the mission didn't feel complete.  
  
She paced the apartment's short hallway. She was aware she couldn't be more blatant about her anxiety if she sent out a memo but she didn't force herself to stop moving.  
  
Clint leaned into the hallway, meet her eyes. His shoulders were loose and she didn't see any fear at all in him. He'd just listened to her torture and kill a man, and now he was alone with her, and he wasn't worried about his safety.  
  
She stopped pacing.  
  
Fear. That's what the writhing emotion in her stomach was. It had been a long time since she'd been afraid. Since she'd felt her own history like a gut-shot.  
  
Natasha grabbed the front of Clint's t-shirt, pivoted, and walked toward the bedroom.  
  
"Strip," she told him over her shoulder and then yanked off her tac suit.  
  
Clint wasn't quite as fast as her, was still kicking off his boots, fumbling a condom out of his wallet and his pants off when she pushed him back against the bed. They'd always worked well together, worked fast, and Natasha didn't have time to get impatient before he was naked and she was mounting him, his back against the brass headboard. She fucked him, blood still in her hair, her hips moving hard and vicious, her nails leaving scratches across his shoulders.  
  
Clint gripped her thighs hard enough to leave bruises and didn't say a goddamned thing, just let her ride him, hard and demanding and entirely selfish. He scrapped his teeth across her nipples, rough and careless.  
  
She rolled away from him as soon as she climaxed.  
  
She drew her knees up to her chest, the muscles of her shoulders twitching. She could hear Clint's breathing, heavy, hear him force his breath to slow. She didn't look at him, kept her voice level and her face blank. She felt like her head was filled with white static.  
  
"She was Red Room," Natasha said. She spoke because it was Clint; because she owed him a debt; because seconds ago she'd been naked and writhing and willing and when she'd moved away, he hadn't reached for her.  
  
"We trained together," she continued. "If he'd wanted a girl with red hair." She cut the sentence off. There was nothing that needed to be said after that. If he'd wanted a redhead, instead of a sloe-eye brunette.  
  
"You would have killed him," Clint said. "Sooner or later." She heard him roll off the bed, get rid of the condom. "Probably sooner," he said consideringly. Natasha let her mouth twist in a smile.


End file.
